5 Quick Outsourcing Tips Even When You Are on a Shoestring Budget

Are you considering various outsourcing options to delegate tasks or to hire new talent? Do you want to focus solely on your core business and work on its expansion? Does access to a large talent pool attract you? Most importantly, do you want to cut down costs and yet, continue providing high-quality services and products to your customers?

The answer to all these questions lies in outsourcing, which is growing at a breakneck speed. In fact in 2016, the global outsourcing industry generated as much as 76.9 billion U.S. dollars in revenue and is slated to increase in the years to come.

Easier said than done, for small businesses and bootstrapping startups, outsourcing may take up more investment than what the owners anticipate. But that doesn’t make it an unachievable feat! Here are some definite tips that will make outsourcing possible even when you’re on a shoestring budget:

1) Create an Outsourcing Strategy – Before you start outsourcing left, right and center, identify what all tasks you can outsource in the first place. Proceed to fix the budget, conduct a research on places where you can find talent, zero-in on the time-frame for hiring the professionals and so on and so forth. This way, you can narrow down your choices and won’t spend unnecessarily on what you don’t require in the first place!

2) Hire People With More Than One Skill Set – Another essential outsourcing tip is that you can hire people who have more than one skill set. A UX designer may double up as a designer or a digital marketer who specializes in SEO can also handle your PPC or email marketing campaigns. This will help you improve your bottom lines better than ever.

3) Begin By Outsourcing The Smaller Tasks – At the initial stages, you can begin outsourcing the smallest of tasks. For instance, you won’t need a full-time employee when all you need is a couple of infographics or text-based content for your landing pages. Similarly, you can hire someone to handle a social media page for a limited time instead of hiring a full-time brand manager. As and when the tasks increase, you can start seeking other options. This takes us to the next point.

4) Bulk Buy The Hours – More often than not, companies hire freelancers on an hourly basis and cut down the costs. You can go a step ahead by bulk buying the hours. This strategy works wonders, if you know how to utilize the outsourced resource(s) over several weeks or months for various projects. Let them work a few hours on a certain project one month and then, take up some other projects in the next month. All you need to do is plan ahead and allocate the tasks wisely to make the most of it!

5) Outsource The Complex Jobs – Every business has a set of complex jobs that take up a lot of efforts. You can avoid this situation by outsourcing such jobs. Here are three of the most complex jobs that you can outsource:

Legal documentation – Having telecommuters working for you directly translates to more signed contracts and all sorts of legal documents. These include but are not limited to NDA agreement, Non-Compete agreement and so on and so forth. Each of these documents will differ for a full-time employee, a freelancer or individuals working on a contract. Choose to outsource all your legal documentation and save your time and money.

Accounting – Whether you run a small business or a large-scale organization, there will be invoices and payments that may turn excessively complex for you to handle alone. It becomes more difficult when you have to keep up with the different taxation and currency laws in various countries from where your remote team works. Enter outsource accounting services, use it to pay your team on time and handle other invoices without stress. Simple!

Recruitment – If you have just begun expanding your team, then it’s a given that in the near future you’ll need a recruiter who’ll oversee all the operations. Don’t get stuck in a rut by spending all your time in hiring a recruiter and then, new talent. Instead, take your pick from a wide range of recruitment agencies, who can get talented individuals onboard within the stipulated time-frame. Also, think of all the hours you will save in searching, contacting, interviewing, and negotiating and onboarding the new hires!

These are some of the top outsourcing tips that will help you improve the bottom line of your business. However, the outsourcing processes are dynamic and it is possible that you will have to encounter some unforeseen changes. This is why, you need to get a thorough understanding of the concept and have an elaborate plan that will help you avoid the pitfalls and reap maximum benefits down the line.

Pratik Hambardiker is the founder of Outsourcing Insight – a platform that helps leverage the performance of various businesses by outsourcing accounting & finance elements. He has more than 15 years of experience in the outsourcing industry and digital marketing. Connect with him on Twitter @pratikh.

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